Multi-faceted Zweistein: A review of the play “Mrs. Einstein”
By Aleksandra Glivacki, July 2nd, 2022.
How to write about two brilliant people, an ordinary person with a hard-to-grasp mind? How to write about their relationship, and still be dramatically relevant? Above all, how to place such a story on solid, realistic foundations out of the sea of silence and unrecorded, just guessed? And how did Snežana Gnjidic manage all that?
This is not the story of the poor, misunderstood, neglected, and my God maybe not that important, the first wife of the world genius Albert Einstein. This is a full-blooded, passionate, full of life story, which – look at the paradox – takes place on the other side of life, among the dead, in hell. There, Mileva and Albert were sentenced to eternal togetherness. And there, with that healthy, posthumous, realistic attitude towards myself and my life, I unravel that life without a trace of pathos
The opening scenes provide information about the characters and the life situation in which they met. And just think – well, this will be a series of charming and intelligently worded biographical sketches, when the author makes a dramatic turn: the retelling gets a strong dramatic charge, and the drama unfolds in unadulterated agony until the end.
Karin Rosnizeck subtly, almost lyrically directs this relationship based in many ways on mathematical formulas and obsession with the limitlessness of space and (I guess) time, actually on the joy of creation. Instead of hell, she places Einstein in a half-dark limbo, romantically illuminated thanks to Dylan Uremovitch’s video material, through which numbers and formulas float, summoning infinity. The direction does not deviate from the realistic procedure, which, considering the circumstances and the scenography by Jasna Saramandić (emptiness and a huge boulder, ein Stein), seems surreal enough to contain worldly longings and torments, but also the mental exhilaration of a genius and a woman who may have been it herself
Of course, all that without the two of them would not be enough to achieve that level of emotion in the audience, that long-lasting applause, certainly without the participation of the clackers. Dušanka Stojanović Glid is Mileva, Goran Jevtić Albert. Two truly complex acting tasks, in different ways, and both superbly done. It is multi-layered, its mostly calm surface only reflects the turbulent, different levels in the depth – fear, hope, joy, despair, horror, reconciliation, cynicism… clearly legible, albeit with quite discreet means. He is the complete opposite. You can see everything on it, and it’s all a huge spectrum of different passions, which it honestly manages to cover. She is beautiful, illuminated by inner spiritual wealth. He is irresistible in everything he does. And then there is another twist, unexpected, at the very end. Which we will not give away, because then there would be no reversal.
